Mike Watchmaker

This year’s 10 equine Eclipse Award divisions on the flat, as always, can be carved up into three categories: the slam dunks, the divisions you have to think about for more than five seconds but don’t really agonize over, and the tough calls. With the understanding that there are still four more Grade 1 events to be run before the end of the calendar year (the Starlet, Los Alamitos Futurity, Le Brea, and Malibu), it now seems safe to assign 2014’s flat equine divisions into our three categories.
Here’s how I see it:
The slam dunks

Obviously, the Breeders’ Cup has a profound effect on Eclipse Award voting. And unfortunately, that will include this year’s controversial and terribly unsatisfying Breeders’ Cup Classic. Keeping in mind that no one should make his Eclipse decisions just a couple of hours after the Breeders’ Cup is over, let’s take a look at how things appear to stand as of now in each Eclipse Award division.

Breeders’ Cup pre-entries will be taken tomorrow (Monday) and will be announced Wednesday. And then, the serious Breeders’ Cup handicapping begins.
But how can you handicap the Breeders’ Cup if you don’t know how the main track at Santa Anita will be playing?

I have said it before, and at the rate he’s going, I will say it again, probably a few times. Although greatness is very much in the eye of the beholder, what is indisputably great about Wise Dan is how he has operated at a very high level for an extended period of time.

Unless you are Victor Espinoza himself, it is impossible to know for certain if his tactics on Sky Kingdom in Saturday’s Awesome Again at Santa Anita, carrying heavily favored Shared Belief ridiculously wide on the first turn and down the backstretch, were 100 percent intentional. But there was motive for intent.